Jerry Coyne is totally Helping

He’s Helping by having a frankly and unapologetically atheist article in the mainstreamyest of mainstream newspapers in the US, USA Today. He’s Helping by writing a lively, interesting, readable piece. He’s Helping by writing a piece that is one of the five most popular on the site today – an atheist piece! He’s Helping by getting a lot of favorable comments there.

One of the more irritating aspects of the “but how is this Helping?” brigade is their assumption that As things are now, So shall they ever be. Here’s a newsflash about the world and people and stuff: change happens. Change happens a lot, and it often happens quite fast. Sure, it’s naïve to think that Progress is Inevitable, but it’s equally naïve to think Progress is Impossible. Stuff happens. Things move back and forth. People change their minds, for good or ill.

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19 Responses to “Jerry Coyne is totally Helping”

I have been told I’m too (even if cautiously) optimistic, even once or twice by fellow-commenters here at B&W. One sign of change is when the previously unthinkable happens and this is one of those moments. It’s a precedent and it’s dragging the debate even further into the public square and we know our opponents fear nothing more than open discussion.

Am I alone in seeing what I think is an interesting bigger picture here? The 9/11 fanaticism was a catalyst for many of the Gnu Atheists to open their mouths, or put pen to paper. The publishing success was a surprise, the enterprise rolled on with more little high points like the bus campaign and then the opposition, which had always been there, tried to make it look like it was splitting us and tried to steamroll orchestrated voices, including several seeming to come from within our own camp, into saying we had to cool it for everyone’s sake, including our own. And one could already feel the backlash starting, even if Jerry’s piece and its prominence, make it seem like an opening shot in a new, utterly unabashed, offensive. The feel seems to be like it’s a new emboldener, because we already know where and how the enemy has regrouped and where the decoys are. And the lesson learned is that there can be no backing down, because the attacks against us are coming when we are still marginalised and they are being whipped up by those knowingly falsely painting us as some kind of all-powerful, fanatical, fundamentalist, immoral juggernaut.

Jerry’s conclusion is the only sensible conclusion. If not the two waves of attacks against science by fundamentalist Christians were not indication enough that religion is in conflict with science. But religion seems to be in conflict with everything, including other religions! Christians even conflict with Christians, Muslims conflict with Muslims. And as Jerry Coyne points out, conflicts between scientists are handled professionally and rationally, and not violently–although Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke are an example of bitter rivalry where one scientist’s work is destroyed into obscurity; how much that was to do with Newton’s bizarre religious fanaticism, we may never know.

But science doesn’t care about religion, unless religion comes along and sticks its big fat fingers into science education or science books. Then religion gets a battle on its hands. Believers shouldn’t be surprised at that should they? That their beliefs and daft daemonizing of people wouldn’t at least piss off some people and cause a reaction?

Jerry Coyne’s article pretty much sums up everything about what we’ve discussed here the last week (has Jerry Coyne been reading?) and I would concur that the conflict between science and religion is the same as the conflict between rationality and irrationality, or reason and unreason. They are complete opposites.

It is no surprise that religious scientists seem to live with these conflicts within them, because they are irrational to begin with. Scientists with persistent kooky theories are rightly laughed at and considered ‘clowns’, and so why must they be handled differently under the name ‘religion’?

What is still shocking, is that religion still claims to have some kind of authority on ‘morality’, and what is so shocking about it is that this claim isn’t meet with a round of giggles and laughter at the complete audacity and suggestion that religion and morals are compatible! I can no longer keep a straight face, when someone like the Pope claims Christianity is a force for good, while he continually provides a safe house for paedophiles to go freely and abuse more victims, or condemning millions to die of AIDS.

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ophelia Benson, blogs of the world. blogs of the world said: He's Helping by having a frankly and unapologetically atheist article in the mainstreamyes… http://reduce.li/uoqjnq #totally […]

Wait a minute? Change happens? You mean situations and societies (and beliefs) evolve? Does this mean the accomodationists don’t believe in societal evolution, or just believe it works over thousands of years?

The core epistemic difference between science and religion can be put very simply and clearly.

In science there is a generally accepted way of settling disputes that does not depend on idiosyncratic beliefs or claims: go to publicly available empirical evidence that it is mutually agreed will address the question at issue. Both (or all) sides to a dispute have access to the same data, the same evidence, and can generally agree on what new evidence would settle a conflict and can seek that new evidence using methods that are public and intersubjectively replicable. Conflicts get resolved by mutual agreement based on shared public evidence. (That, of course, is an ideal; individual scientists are human and don’t always accept a resolution for reasons unrelated to the evidence, but the ideal does often occur and the principle holds regardless of local violations.)

In religion there is no generally accepted way of settling disputes. There is no agreement about what would decide a given question like, say, whether Jesus was divine (Christianity) or was merely a mortal prophet (Islam). As a consequence, disputes cannot be genuinely settled. They must remain festering, and any “resolution,” if it occurs at all, is in the end produced by suppression of one sort or another. Hence religion is doomed to perpetual conflict.

I know of no way of bridging that difference and hence know of no way to genuinely “reconcile” science and religion. The only pseudo-reconciliation has to be some form of (possibly incomplete) dissociative identiy disorder in individuals and in the purposeful suppression of real differences in organizations like NAS and AAAS.

I think Stewart’s initial comment here, obviously prompted by Ophelia’s focus, brings up some very interesting areas to contemplate. What comes next for the Gnu movement? How can we take the next few steps?

I suppose one not-too-distant-future event we can look forward to is the publication of P.Z.’s book. I for one have been waiting for that one for years; here’s hoping it makes big waves.

It is interesting to see that Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist himself, has come out strongly in support of both PZ’s and Jerry’s recent statements. Dale McGowan also makes a supportive comment, together with a correct assertion that not everyone who works on building bridges is an accommodationist.

What’s new and exciting about New Atheism is that it is a movement that is actually getting some traction. The portion of respect now grudgingly conceded to the lack of faith should ultimately subtract from the respect conventionally accorded to faith, and may help make any other sort of attractive nonsense less respectable.

Americans are beginning to realize that there are more atheists than Jews or Mormons. We’re roughly as numerous as gays, and with agnostics we’re as numerous as gays and bisexuals. We’ve learned that by coming out, by being not only visible but strident, assertive and boisterous, we’re advancing our status from tolerance to respect.

I’m not sure that we need many radical new directions as a next step or steps. More of the same is going to bring about a change in how society is perceived (no, it won’t change how the religious hate us, or how the accomodationists squirm or try to rock our boat – depending on whether they are more motivated by fear or by Templeton money). When 9/11 happened there was nobody alive for whom the current situation seemed always to have existed. If we accept that one doesn’t realise much of what’s going on around one for the first few years of one’s life, then we have a lot of 14-year-olds who do not know what a world without in-your-face atheism looks like (think about it, please really think about it: a population for whom titles like “The God Delusion” or “God Is Not Great” have absolutely zero shock value because they’ve always been there). And only the religiously brainwashed among them are likely to think it’s imperative to shove it back in the closet (in which even they have never seen it). Let’s have someone for them to vote for in an election or two. The absurdities of religion need to be pointed out even more. It’s like Mel Brooks doing tasteless comedy about the Nazis; his rationale is that these guys can only wield power if they’re taken seriously, so that’s where they need to be eroded.

What I would like to see is less opportunities missed. We don’t know how long we’re going to have Hitchens continuing to articulate for us. We need to develop people who can react with as much presence and presence of mind. Maybe Todd Stiefel should be funding scholarships for the truly promising to undergo intensive training in public atheist advocacy (and I mean something that would include enough grounding in theology to crush any Courtier’s Replies before they came). I’m not going back to search for the details now, but when I write of missed opportunities I think of something I saw on YouTube recently, though I don’t know how long ago it happened. Someone was on O’Reilly representing our side in the case of an atheist billboard O’Reilly was attacking. O’Reilly’s line was “you’re just doing this to provoke us” and, although our guy was otherwise good, I so wanted him to call O’Reilly on the provocations in scripture against anyone of another or no religion.

The fact that there have been so many atheist billboards in the last couple of years that I can’t remember which case this referred to is itself eloquent testimony to the presence we now have that we did not in the past. Anyone who thought we could do this without a lot of (non-violent) fighting (not to be confused with backing down, please) is or was simply naive.

Agreed (with enormous regret) and of course you realise that’s not what I meant. We have a number of more or less well-known names and faces on our team, each with strengths and weaknesses. Hitchens, who is one of the very few not to be a science (or philosophy) professional of some kind, has been our big gun of rhetoric. I think the service he has done us, in terms of sheer visibility, is just incalculable and that extends as far as his body language while tackling an opponent. There cannot be a Hitchens successor in most senses. There will be a natural process of good and useful people rising higher in “our circles,” whether or not anything is done to help the process. I suppose what I am saying is that we need not just good scientists and good writers on our side, but also effective personalities. We do have some, even if they include only one Hitchens and we ought to be keeping our eyes open for those with the best natural communications skills.

Instead of counting what percentage of scientists are believers, one could try tallying up the percentage of prominent Gnu Atheists who are scientists… now that’s my idea of compatibility.